The New York state judge presiding over Donald Trump’s hush money case pushed the GOP candidate’s sentencing until past the November election, saying in a Friday order that the upcoming election had played a role in his decision.
“The members of this jury served diligently on this case, and their verdict must be respected and addressed in a manner that is not diluted by the enormity of the upcoming presidential election,” wrote Judge Juan Merchan in a letter.
Merchan set a new sentencing date for November 26.
After a jury found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts in May, Merchan had initially set a sentencing date for July 11. But, as he wrote in the Friday letter, the Supreme Court’s expansive decision that presidential actions are largely beyond the reach both of criminal prosecution and of being used as evidence in a criminal case has caused him to delay sentencing. Almost immediately after the Supreme Court’s July 1 decision, Trump filed a motion to dismiss based on the ruling. Merchan said in Friday’s letter that he would issue his decision about that motion on November 12.
Throughout the case, Merchan very consciously sought to appear free of political influence. During the trial, he consistently gave Trump and his legal team the benefit of the doubt. Merchan took a light hand after Trump disparaged witnesses in the case on social media; at another point, Merchan interrupted the testimony of Stormy Daniels after Trump’s defense counsel failed to lodge an objection during a particularly salacious moment.
The effect was to produce a trial that largely managed to keep Trump’s status as a political actor out of the evidence presented to the jury, and which allowed Merchan to credibly say that he gave Trump the maximal benefit of the doubt at each opportunity. Merchan did so without conceding to the argument that Trump made throughout, and which the Supreme Court would later affirm: that Trump’s status as a former President earned him special deference.
The delay is a continuation of Merchan’s initial approach mixed in with an apparent attempt to parse the Supreme Court’s decision. In the letter, Merchan left his ruling on whether to dismiss the case in its entirety extremely open.
“Were this court to decide, after a careful consideration of the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump, that this case should proceed, it will be faced with one of the most critical and difficult decisions a trial court judge faces — the sentencing of a defendant found guilty of crimes by a unanimous jury of his peers,” Merchan wrote.
Any further delay of sentencing before the November election, Merchan added, would “bring us within approximately 41 days of the 2024 presidential election.”
It’s an admission that Merchan, as the law requires, “must interpret and apply as appropriate” the Supreme Court’s ruling. The result is to leave Trump formally guilty by a jury, but unconvicted and with a plausible route to dismissal before the November election.
Read Merchan’s letter here:
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